The present invention relates to an improvement in a machine for forming stacks of cheese and discharging the same.
Conventional cheese stacking machines, for example, the Benhil Wrapper-Hockland Casting machine combination production line produces individually wrapped slices of processed cheese. These individually wrapped slices are delivered in ribbons, for example, twelve slices to a ribbon, to a discharge assembly where they are stacked and then pushed onto a flight chain for movement to another work area.
Such machines include a cam shift which is driven by the same motor which operates the discharge assembly and the structure which cyclically wraps, cuts and delivers the individual slices of cheese to that discharge assembly. The cam shaft mounts cams which in turn operate switches. These switches control the mechanical movement of the elements of the discharge assembly which cause the stacks of cheese to be delivered to a flight conveyor at a given point in the cycle at which a given number of cheese slices have been stacked. The cam shaft is geared so that delivery occurs after a given number of ribbons have been delivered to the machine. This arrangement, however, has several drawbacks.
First of all, it was difficult to change the number of ribbons of cheese which were stacked before the machine operated to push the cheese stacks onto the flight bar. A change could be made only by altering the gears but this was time consuming and difficult. Further, it was not possible to form a twenty slice stack and hitherto such stacks could be formed only by running two ten slice stacks and manually combining the stacks. Another difficulty was that if a defective ribbon was pulled from the line, then the stacks which would have included that ribbon would be one slice short.
The above drawbacks in this conventional type of machine are overcome according to the present invention by a simple and inexpensive modification thereof which does not substantially affect the operation of the machine. More particularly, a clutch is inserted between the cam shaft and the structure which drives the cam shaft to cause the discharge assembly to operate. An electro-optical sensor is mounted for detecting the actual presence of each slice of cheese as it is placed atop a stack in the discharge assembly. The electro-optical sensor is connected to an electrical counter which can be pre-set to any predetermined number. Upon the counter's accumulation of a count indicating the desired number, a control circuit actuates the clutch so that the driving structure and the cam shaft of the machine are once again coupled together. The discharge mechanism now operates normally to discharge the slices of cheese.
With the present modification, it is a simple matter to pick any size stack and to change that stack number by changing the setting on the electrical counter. At the same time, the modifications to the machine are minimal.